This I Believe

I believe in being an individual. Looking at “This I believe”, and thinking of what I might write about, would not come easy. Everyone I had looked at had great beliefs and wonderful writing styles. This whole time the answer was right in front of me. I can’t rely on Tony Hawk or Penn Jennings to think of what I believe in, I have to look at myself and figure it out on my own.

The Razor phone, oh how I wanted it, and I had finally gotten it, so what if it was cool or the “in” I had it. After I received my phone I started to notice that everyone either already had it or was getting it. I started to see them in blues, grays, and pinks. After a month I got the phone it started to break down. I had just gotten this phone, it was suppose to be cool, but having the “in” wasn’t all it was cut out to be. I had to get a new phone that was reliable phone.

Some of us know what it is like to have an older sibling, especially when that sibling gets everything that they want. My older sister, I love her to death, but she can’t get everything she wants, but of course, she wishes she can. She goes to college and complains that everyone has, BMW’s, and Coach bag’s, and says she doesn’t fit in. Well she’s right, she doesn’t, she’s an individual. She wants so much to be able to get all of those things and to have the “in” that she doesn’t realize that she is letting other people influence her. She drives her ’97 Eclipse while her friends are sick of their ’06 beemers. Why does she want to be like everyone else? I honestly think that no one cares what she wears or what she drives, she just thinks that they do.

Ever since I was five and in kindergarten, I have been different. It started then, when I asked for my very first piercing. It took me a while to convince my dad, but I got him to feel guilty and he caved in. He took me to the mall. The people told me to hold a bear, so that it would ease the pain, I still haven’t figured out why holding the bear would ease it, but it really did. Being a young boy and being the only boy with a piercing at that age is different, some people might look at me weird or make fun of me in the future, but as long as I liked it, it was the “in”. Here I am eleven years later and with five more piercings, still being who I want to be.

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Top 100 Essays USB Drive

This USB drive contains 100 of the top This I Believe audio broadcasts of the last ten years, plus some favorites from Edward R. Murrow's radio series of the 1950s. It's perfect for personal or classroom use! Click here to learn more.

This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.